Defining Semantics Linguistics – Semanticsscientific study of language –

scientific study of meaningimplication of corpus and methodology- no general agreement about the nature

of meaning

Formal vs functional approaches to meaning

FORMAL: semantic logics, logic semantics, symbolic logics (Carnapp, Quine); truth as basic category; logics and mathematics associations

FUNCTIONAL: analysis of meaning in natural languages

About the term ‘semantics’First used in 1894 in ‘Reflected meanings: a

point in semantics’.M. Bréal: ‘An Essay on Semantics’ (1897)Most important usage of the term: Ogden

and Richards: ‘The Meaning of Meaning’ (1923)(Malinowski:‘The problem of meaning in primitive languages’)

Areas of semantic analysis1. Word meaning2. Meaning in vocabulary

organisation (paradigmatic level)3. Meaning in linear sequence (in

syntax) (syntagmatic level)

Historical semanticsdeals with the study of change of meaning in timeBloomfield lists a number of different changes:Narrowing: meat 'food'Widening:bird 'nestling'Metonymy: (nearness in space or time): jaw 'cheek'Synecdoche: (whole/part relation): stove 'heated

room'Degeneration: knave 'boy'Elevation: knight 'boy'

Reasons for these changes: Accidental: tanks are called as they are because of a

security decision in First World War to deceive the Germans into thinking that water-tanks were being dispatched

Due to needs: the word car was an obsolete poetic word for 'chariot' until the motor-car was invented. Most scientific words have acquired specialized meanings that have no close relationship to the non-scientific use (mass, energy)

Taboo: privy-lavatory-toilet-bathroom-loo.

1. ETYMOLOGY-discovery of the earlier meanings of words, the 'true' meaning of words (first serious discussion is in Plato's Cratylus)

Chief difficulty: there can be no 'true' or 'original' meaning since human l. stretches back too far. (nice once meant 'silly'. Lat. nescius-'ignorant').

2. LEXICOLOGY- study of lexemesLexicography- art of dictionary-

makingRoget’s Thesaurus – conceptual

dictionary

3. STYLISTICS – stylistic variation in speech and writing

achieving style: choice of words, use ofmetaphorentered linguistics in 40s and 50s of the

previous ct.

4. DISCOURSE ANALYSIS (PRAGMATICS) – analysis of all kinds of written and spoken texts

- great development in 1970s (Austin, Searle)

Semantics in other disciplinesSemantics has been of concern to philosophers,

anthropologists and psychologistsPhilosophy: Some thought that many philosophical

problems can be solved by the study of 'ordinary l.'. They argue that the nature of good and evil in moral philosophy can be dealt with by seeing the way in which words as good are used.

Anthropology: They are concerned with language as an essential part of cultural and behavioural patterns. One specific area of anthropological research that is particularly interesting in connection to semantics is that of kinship (complex kinship relations of many societies are revealed in equally complex semantic patterns of the kinship terminology)

Psychology: They try to understand how we process l. in production and reception. There are problems with understanding sentences with 'self-embedding': The boy the man the woman loved saw ran away.-rely on the meaning to help us with the interpretation.

Communication theory: comm.system carries information; it should have minimum redundancy (parts of the message that can be removed without removing any information) and minimum noise (anything that interferes with transmission). The human speaker, unlike the comm. system, doesn't merely transmit the message; he also creates it.

Exact beginning of semantics?REISIG (philologist, 1839), forerunner

of serious semantic analysisFuture of linguistics: analysis of ALL

natural languagesImportance of the study of meaning

BRÉAL (‘An essay on semantics’, 1897) – considered father of semantics, first to popularize the term SÉMANTIQUE

no serious linguistic analysis without touching on meaning

semantics has to be an integral part of linguistics

need for syntactic semantics

Development of semanticsStructural semantics (beginning of the

20th ct.): discovery of the general principles of semantic change

Lexeme meaning: COMPONENTIAL ANALYSIS

MEYER (1910):”semantic system”- grouping of words by meaning in coordinated whole (military ranks)

TRIER (1931): elaboration of SEMANTIC (LEXICAL) FIELDS

End of 1960s: establishment of TG (focus on syntax)

1963 Katz and Fodor’s generative theory of semantics

1980s: major overturn in general linguistics:

COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS >COGNITIVE SEMANTICS